Music Playlist

Song Roulette

In this week’s random selection of songs, I turned to Ms. Boss Lady, the Alibi’s editor-in-chief (and music editor before me) Laura Marrich. Aside from helping assemble this here alternative news weekly 52 times a year, Marrich is also in three bands: The Gracchi, 5-Star Motelles and Up The Holler. She’s also a jerk. Kidding! From her office computer’s iTunes, filled with dangerous Joni Mitchell land mines, Marrich shuffles her songs.

1) “Street Car” • Hayden • Skyscraper National Park

“This is a really nice, depressing kind of mellow-twilight-glowing album that’s good for when you’re PMS-ing.”

2) “I Was Born (A Unicorn)” • The Unicorns • Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone?

“Unicorns are a fun band. They make you feel like you’re marching around when you were a kid in galoshes that are too big for you. It’s very stupid and joyous.”

“In addition to being rewarded with excellent songs on this album, you’re rewarded with these really funny song titles from this wonderful, defunct local band starring Billy Bellmont. The instrumentation on this—they’re just super-tight and it’s really nicely arranged, everything on here. And the fact that they get all ‘rawk’ is good in an unexpected way.”

4) “We Dance Alone” • Beck • The Information

“I like Beck, but more and more I’ve become concerned that as I listen to these albums he’s sending me subconscious Scientology messages. I feel like, being an artist, he’s probably drawing from his experience when he thinks about things—especially when he’s getting deep, or whatever. I can’t help but think those things are sometimes related to Scientology, and that’s where he’s going to draw a lot of his allegory from. The fact that that’s just washing over me as I’m listening to it ... uh, yeah.”

5) “I”m Designer” • Queens of the Stoneage • Era Vulgaris

“I love this album. This is probably the weakest song on it. Marisa [Demarco, news and managing editor] said something funny that I think is really true about this band: When you listen to it, you kind of pretend like you’re playing all the instruments. You can only imagine how satisfying it would be to play the drums like that, or guitar, and that’s pretty much the case for this whole album.”